January 15 – After seven year cruising the solar system, NASA’s Stardust spacecraft returns to give the world a look at dust from outer space.
February 10 – The 2006 Winter Olympics start in Turin, Italy. The U.S. wins a respectable 25 medals.
March 25 – Over half a million persons take part in Los Angeles’ Great March, demonstrating against anti-immigration laws.
May 1 – In cities all over the U.S., Hispanics show what it would be like if immigrants didn’t work, shop or go to school during the Day without an Immigrant.
June 9 – The 2006 World Cup begins in Germany and, for a while at least, even the U.S. is more interested in futbol than football.
June 25 – The U.S.’s second richest man, Warren Buffet, announces that he will donate over $30 billion (that’s $30,000,000,000!) to the foundation started by the richest man, Bill Gates. Who says that one (really, really rich) person can’t change the world?
July 2 – Felipe Calderon wins the Mexican presidential election by such a tiny sliver that there’s a recount, protests, and lawsuits. Not a great beginning.
July 31 – Cuban President Fidel Castro transfers power indefinitely to younger brother Raul, causing all sorts of rumors about the fate of Castro and the Communist island.
August 24 – For over 70 years, we’ve known that there are nine planets in the solar system. Now, there are only eight. Pluto gets demoted to “dwarf planet”, along with other tiny, icy objects far, far away.
August 29 – A year after Katrina, the population of New Orleans less than half what is was before the hurricane, thousands of houses need to be demolished, and the levees aren’t fixed.
September 11 - Five years after 9/11, Osama Bin Laden is still on the loose, the Taliban is making a come-back in Afghanistan, and there’s still a gaping hole where the World Trade Center used to be.
September 12 – With its release of iTunes 7, Apple announces that people have bought over 1.5 billion songs in three years.
September 29 – U.S. Representative Mark Foley resigns after sending “inappropriate” (aka, totally gross) IMs to 16-year-old White House pages.
October 9 – A few months after test firing missiles, North Korea announces it tested its first nuclear weapon. The United Nations are not happy.
October 17 – The 300 millionth resident of the U.S. is born (based on the Census’s best guess).
November 7 – Mid-term elections are held. Big winners, big losers, strange laws getting passed, accusations of voter fraud… basically, the usual.
2006 Year in Trends
Bird flu – During the first half of this year, you could hardly sneeze without someone talking about bird flu. People watched nervously as the infamous disease spread from Asia to Europe. But flu season died down before disaster struck, so everyone forgot.
Pop Web – With over 100 million members, MySpace is one of the top websites in the world. YouTube streams 100 million videos. Add Blogger, Facebook, Flickr, and others and it’s obvious that the in thing now is sharing – everything! – online.
Celebrity babes – Brooke Shields. Gwenyth Paltrow. Gwen Stefani. Angelina Jolie. They all gave birth in 2006. TomKat’s daughter Suri causes the biggest stir.
Sporting dopes – From the Olympics to the Tour de France to Major League Baseball, seems like everyone hot was using drugs.
Estela Kennen - Estela is a doctoral student in Public Administration and a freelance writer and editor.
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